A wide variety of Hand Hygiene Compliance Confirmation Systems (HHCCS) have been described in recent years. Of particular interest to the present invention are the systems disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,755,494 and 7,978,083, on the one hand, and of WO2010056534A2 and US2010-0117823 on the other, the disclosure of each of which is herein incorporated by reference. In the '494 and '083 patents, there is disclosed a system whereby the hand hygiene status of personnel (referred to here generally as Health Care Workers, (HCWs), but this is not intended to exclude personnel working in food handling establishments, hospices, old-age homes, and the like—i.e. any personnel working in any facility where hand hygiene monitoring and compliance with hand hygiene protocols is desired come within the ambit of the present invention) is definitively confirmed by detection of volatile compounds on or emanating from the hands of a person who completes a hand hygiene procedure. When hand hygiene procedures have been confirmed, an indicator, for example a light on a Personnel Identification Badge (PIB) (and optionally also on a Hand Hygiene Compliance Monitor (HHCM)) worn by the person is illuminated. Of course, the color of the illuminated light is not critical, but for purposes of ease of description, we shall herein refer to illumination of a light confirming compliance with hand hygiene procedures as a “Green Light Condition”, or “GLC”.
An embodiment of the HHCCS described in the '494 and '083 patents is included in one embodiment of the WO2010056534A2 and US2010-0117823 system, which, in addition, provides a difference in Time Of Flight (TOF) of sound signals as compared to a electromagnetic signals to confirm the location of a person when completing a hand hygiene procedure, (i.e. on achieving a GLC), and the status of the hand hygiene compliance of a person in relation to any patients in a health care facility, (i.e. does the person have a GLC on approaching a patient in a health care facility).
In relation to the systems and procedures described in the above-discussed patent documents, the present patent disclosure provides an enhancement whereby, from the time a person completes a hand hygiene procedure to the time of achieving a GLC, referred to herein as the Response Time, RT, is optimized so that there is little or no waiting time involved once the hand hygiene procedure is completed to the time that a GLC condition can be achieved. Of course, the system, method and apparatus described herein can be used as a stand-alone system or in combination with a wide variety of existing HHCCSs known in the art, with appropriate modifications which those skilled in the art, based on the present description, are able to make without undue experimentation.